Czére Andrea szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 105. (Budapest, 2006)

ÉVA LIPTAY: Between Heaven and Earth II: The Iconography of a Funerary Papyrus from the Twenty-First Dynasty (Part II)

4. 4. 1. SOLAR EYE In some other cases the solar eye may also appear inside the sun disc on the coffins and funerary papyri of Twenty-first Dynasty Amon priests. The closest parallel to the Budapest papyrus is the motif that appears on the Henuttawi version: the sun disc comprising the wd't-eyc is flanked by the bodies of two scarabs just emerging from above and below. As mentioned above, the disc symbolises the Underworld in this case, out of which the sun-god comes into existence in the shape of a scarab or a sun disc. In a further example of the same period the solar eye appears just like on our papyrus, i.e. as the passenger of the sun barque, though without the i/?/-sign.

40 In another papyrus in the British .Museum

41 the same divine manifestation is worshipped by a baboon and placed on an Iht-sign, but not on the barque. A solar eye is likewise involved in that personified disc which outstretches its arms and spreads its light onto the area

—the earth

—bordered by a pair of lions symbolising the two horizons.

42 The same motif also can be traced in the various versions of the Litany of Re of the period. As a matter of fact, its pictorial representation partly originates from the royal variants of the Litany of Re dated back to the New Kingdom in which, however, the solar eye was generally put in a dotted or notched oval (ntrty)

43 instead of a sun disc. This depiction is nothing else than a further variant of the above mentioned conception: the round or oval shaped ball of dung denoting the Netherworld out of which the god comes into being can be associated with the sun disc as a result of the transformation. In one of the Twenty-first Dynasty versions

44 obviously intending to model the Schlußszene of the Book of Gates, the solar eye and the scarab occur in the same oval that is raised up to the sky by the figure of Nun partly emerged from the earth. On certain motifs of the Litany of Re are variants originating from the discussed period, however, the solar eye is framed not by an oval, but rather by the sun disc. One of them enumerates a mummy-shaped figure upon the neck of which two arms holding a beaming sun disc can be seen in the place of the head,

4

' while another example represents a sun disc containing a wdlt-eye flanked above by a pair of arms of an entity with female breasts symbolising the West and below by the arms of a personified disc. Both the latter sun disc and the female breasts pour out rays from themselves towards the central sun disc.

46 Similarly to the analogies mentioned so far, the Budapest papyrus applies the right eye inside the disc, an iconographie motif that can be identified with the sun-god itself and connected to the eastern horizon and to the moment of creation. Other symbols, such as the iht-sign, the double lion of the horizons, the scarab and the figure of Nun are used to emphasize the same symbolism and thus to link the scene to the same cosmological event.